On this episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour, host Julie Gunlock talks to PR professional and founder of Do Better FCPS (which stands for Fairfax City Public Schools) Sue Zoldak about the unwillingness of public school officials in her community to listen to parents, the slow process of fully opening public schools in her state, the anti-Asian “equity” policy changes happening in her school district, and why she and other parents have had to become activists to demand better public education. Tune in for this lively conversation!
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey, everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves and, mostly importantly, their kids. Joining me today is someone I really admire, Sue Zoldak. She is a PR professional living, like me, in the northern Virginia area. She launched a parenting advocacy group called Do Better Fairfax City Public Schools last year to push for the opening of schools. Sue, great to have you on.
Sue Zoldak:
Thank you, Julie, for having me.
Julie Gunlock:
I’ve been watching you on Twitter for a long time. It’s kind of funny to finally hear someone’s voice because I feel like I know you really well, again, because I’ve been following on Twitter, but we’ve never really talked. So it’s really great to connect and have this conversation. I really appreciate how fearless you are on social media, calling out Fairfax school officials for many of their, I should say for all of their decisions. As of late, there seem to be very few good ones.
But this isn’t your full-time job. You set up this Do Better Fairfax City Public Schools, but you do that in addition to your job. You have a daughter, and you’re managing a household. Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you launched Do Better.
Sue Zoldak:
Yes. Julie, likewise, I’ve been following you on Twitter. It’s really great to get to talk to you. As soon as I started Do Better, everyone’s like, “You have to follow Julie. She has so many things to say about her school system.” So it’s just really funny for us to meet this way because of COVID. But let me explain to you how our lives crossed like this I guess in this unfortunate way, but this is the silver lining of this. I always tell everyone is that I have, through my journey, met a lot of amazing people.
So if we walk back to March of 2020 is when schools all shut down. If you recall, I think that’s the approximate date of every school shutting down across the country, not just in Fairfax County here in northern Virginia. We started to get a little uncomfortable here when we did not hear from Fairfax County for a week, two weeks. What was the plan for doing distance? Why were we emailing? A lot of parents were saying, “We’ve emailed the teacher, the principal. We’re getting radio silence.”
So many parents were also hearing through the grapevine from friends who work at Fairfax County Public Schools, which is I believe the second largest employer in Fairfax County. So a lot of people know people who work here who were saying, “We were told to be quiet. We were told not to say anything because we were told not to work. We were told to burn our snow days, to log in as a snow day because the county doesn’t have a plan. The superintendent doesn’t have a plan.” So we started getting a little suspicious, and we thought, “We need some answers. I mean this isn’t right.”
Even if you don’t have an exact plan, honesty is always the best policy. It’s better to just come out and say, “We’re thinking. We’re working. If you have questions, this is how you can contact us.” Just have an open dialogue. It’s never good to shut parents out. That’s the last thing you want to do, especially during a pandemic when parents are worried. I mean we’re both parents. That only makes parents even more hyper. So fast forward, we were one of the last counties in the area. We’re the 10th largest, maybe the 12th largest school district in the country, but one of the largest school districts in this Washington, DC metro area with one of the largest budgets.
We were one of the last to return to distance learning, as everyone did a month later, mid-April. On the first day, the system that students use crashed. We come to find out the school had not done any load testing. They postpone another week. The classrooms were then attacked by 4chan. The students were not given private links. So long story short, I mean there were all a host of other problems which we don’t have to detail. Everyone can look at the news and pull some horrible articles about what happened last April. But we formed, at that point, Do Better FCPS in order to just say, “There is no accountability in this school system, which has a $3.2 billion, with a B, budget.”
There’s no accountability. There’s no transparency. The leadership, we’re now in question of what kind of leadership this is because you have to take responsibility for what’s happened, for the fact you didn’t have a plan for a month. And then when you did open it up, it failed not once, but twice.
Julie Gunlock:
Right. It’s interesting. I hate to interrupt, but I do want to say one thing. It’s interesting you say that we started to notice all this stuff when the pandemic happened. I mean there’s been really nothing good about this pandemic. But, I will say, boy, has it opened people’s eyes to the education system and the public school education system. Now people are actually tuning … I mean Fairfax City Public Schools school board meetings are bananas, I mean completely bananas.
I’m sure that for a long time, maybe some people were tuning in, but not really. I’ve read the statistics on who shows up for a school board election. It’s something like only 4% of a town or city’s population votes for the school board, and for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s the older people who don’t have kids. They don’t care about the schools. They might connect it to the property taxes or property values, rather. They don’t really care. People are pretty apathetic about … Not anymore. Not anymore. You are going to have a lot more interest in who gets these elected spots because it is astonishing just how powerful they are.
When you say billion-dollar budgets here, this is critical that we get valuable people into these spots. I’m sorry for interrupting, but I did want to make that point that-
Sue Zoldak:
No, no, no. Absolutely.
Julie Gunlock:
… it’s just I love these stories of people suddenly going, “Oh my gosh. I got to pay attention here. This is bad. This needs improvement.”
Sue Zoldak:
That’s exactly right. The only point in telling that background is just to say we formed even before opening schools was an issue. I mean we formed back in the spring. We really got rolling in early summer before we even knew or had an inkling that we wouldn’t come back in the fall. I mean our goal then was to … It seems like nobody holds these people accountable, like you said. A lot of people move through our area, not just Fairfax, but obviously Arlington, Alexandria, Montgomery County, Loudoun, because they trust that these are supposed to be some of the best school systems in the United States and that people here, they are focused on their careers.
They work near the capital of our nation. They want to be able to trust the school system. Housing here is relatively expensive. And then people say, “What am I getting for this?”
Julie Gunlock:
Well, and that’s one of the reasons too. There is a lot of money in this area, but there’s a lot of people who don’t have high-paying jobs and so they move to the area because the public schools … They might not be able to afford the private schools. So they think that the public schools are good. This is an exceedingly expensive area to live in, to buy a house, to purchase … especially to get your foot in the door and purchase that first house. It is very, very difficult.
So, again, if you do buy a house, if you’re a middle-class family and you have kids, for goodness’ sake, maybe if a mom wants to stay home, which is nearly impossible too, then you think, “Okay. Well, I’m going to save money,” because you don’t have any left really, “So I’m going to go to the public schools.” I think people have a very clear vision that that is not the case, that these are not good schools and they are not being run by the most competent people. They certainly don’t care about how parents feel. So it’s this great awakening.
Sue Zoldak:
It really is. The thing is, they have the budget to be great. People have this misconception, “Well, we shouldn’t feel sorry for those people loud in Fairfax. It’s a bunch of very wealthy suburban families.” But that is not true, like you’re saying. What people do is they scrimp and they save to move into a home here in this area that’s much smaller than they could afford in a Midwestern state because they know that they can’t afford to put five children through a private school, so they say, “A Fairfax County education is supposed to be just as good, if not better than a private school. So we will live in a much smaller home or a condo. We will get children the best education by sacrificing.”
Those are the families that are truly being insulted and hurt by the behavior of the leadership that we have that pretty much I don’t think they take their jobs seriously.
Julie Gunlock:
No, I don’t either. One thing that I’ve discovered because, again, I sort of had this great awakening to the situation as well. But I do want to stress something you said. This is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. You started early. Man, it was like you woke up and you mobilized. You were one of the first people that I saw that was organizing, that was really looking at the budget, that was really reading these decisions and criticizing these decisions. You had a sense that this was a very important thing because other communities haven’t had … I would say they didn’t stand up as quickly or they haven’t been as aggressive.
So I really want to compliment you because I do think that there’s a lot of different groups out there. But, Sue, yours has been just wonderful. I think too when I say it was an awakening for me, I think part of it is just it’s so overwhelming. I didn’t really know where to go. So it was really nice to have you out there and some of these other groups that were out there early because parents really didn’t have a lot of help. Certainly, they weren’t getting information, you mentioned, also. They weren’t getting information from the schools. There was no information.
I want to talk a little bit later about the contrast in how some of the different movements operate. But before I do that, I don’t want to get off Fairfax. That was the beginning of it, but it’s been a year now. It’s been over a year. What’s the condition of Fairfax schools now? Are they open full-time? Are they hybrid? Are they giving kids a choice between online? What’s the situation there?
Sue Zoldak:
We recently, I would say probably in the last month, gave all the students the ability to return to four days a week. But what’s unfortunate is that not every child took that opportunity. So there are some schools where there are perhaps 50% of the students at four days and half maybe or a third at two days and a significant portion still choosing entirely virtual for whatever reason. We find a whole host of reasons, varying from the very sad, “We didn’t know that school was open,” which goes to the failure of the connection and the communication or even the failure to communicate in the right language by Fairfax County schools.
But also, just the fearmongering that I feel the school board themselves, the school board members are responsible. When you spend a year sending out a message that is echoed by the teachers association, “It’s not safe. Not till it’s safe. We have to go by the numbers. The numbers are high. The numbers are still high.” You have the people who are the loudest, who are at the leadership positions saying these things over and over and over. But when [inaudible 00:13:52], were they the first people to say, “It’s safe now?” No, they were not.
Julie Gunlock:
No. No.
Sue Zoldak:
I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for them to utter those words. There’s still school board members that say, “Do it with caution. Do it with safety.” They’ve scared the bejesus out of some of these children and some of these parents and they’ve done nothing to go back to them and say … The fact is statistically, and we know this, that there is less chance of getting COVID in a school building than there is doing virtual learning. A school building is the safest place to be for a child and a teacher.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. I want to just really quickly there’s also in Arlington and a lot of Fairfax cities, I mean we’re getting to the point, like in Alexandria, where there are zero reports, zero reports of COVID infections, zero hospitalizations. We have turned a corner. I guess the rate now, they recalculated it. The chance of a child getting COVID is like .00004. I mean it’s so minuscule now. This is what galls me too. They’re continuing the fearmongering with the insistence on masks for a child for eight hours a day.
Let’s be honest here. These schools in Alexandria and in Arlington and in Fairfax County are old buildings. They’ve been around a long time. My child goes to a school that was built in 1920 and I don’t think it’s been renovated. It’s got some charming things. There are these gigantic fireplaces. I mean they’re almost five-foot-tall fireplaces. They don’t use them, obviously. But that used to be how they warmed the entire school because all the classrooms have them. So these buildings are not air-conditioned properly. They’re not also heated properly.
So these kids are in the heat. I hate it. I always hated going into the school building on a hot summer day because it just wasn’t cool or only certain rooms are cooled, and then they open the windows. So you’ve got these kids with these masks on. You know how DC summers are. They’re hot. They’re humid. So this insistence on-
Sue Zoldak:
Right. Right. They’re uncomfortable.
Julie Gunlock:
This insistence on masking is another way to continue the fearmongering. Like you say, they’re not offering any statements of, “We know it’s safe, but this is a precaution that we’re taking.” No, it’s again, it’s this theater, this theater of fear that they’re pushing. Again, they’re pushing it on kids. It’s very galling. To be honest with you about it, I think the masking is going to be the next big battle.
Sue Zoldak:
I mean we hope it’s going to go away only because, look, people accuse us of playing politics with all this. I’m like, “I’m playing politics?” I mean if you look at the data, there has been no correlation between mask mandates and the COVID infection rate. Show me the correlation and I will say, “Okay. Let’s do it.” The fact is now we have said from the beginning we have been tracking the data that has come from Dr. Oyster.
We’ve said, “Look, here’s the Qualtrics data. Pull down where it says virtual, and then look at the infection rate of teachers. And then pull down where it says in person and look at the infection rate of teachers. You will see that they’re nearly identical. Explain that. Explain that, why these teachers who are teaching virtually still are getting COVID at the exact same rate as the teachers that were teaching in person. How can you tell me that you’re safer that way. You’re obviously leaving the house, as you should be allowed to leave the house.” You know what I mean? Look-
Julie Gunlock:
It really is.
Sue Zoldak:
… it’s not happening inside the school building.
Julie Gunlock:
I think what is also so galling … I say galling 15 times a day. That’s probably low. I probably say it 100 times a day. But I also find what’s so galling is that for the last year … We have a pretty fun superintendent ourselves. For a year, he says things like, “We’re just following the science. We’re just following the science.” So the entire year when other schools are opening up and, by the way, all private schools are already open, this guy’s just shouting, “We’re following the science.”
And then when the science no longer … When things are truly opening up and the CDC is saying, “Okay, you don’t have to wear your masks indoors even,” then suddenly they kind of shut up about following the science. In our case, so the guidance was six feet, that desks had to be six feet apart. And then the CDC came out and said, “It’s okay. You can make it three feet.” Because this became a capacity problem. It’s hard to get kids back in if you don’t have the room, especially in Alexandria because we have a terrible overcrowding problem.
So when the CDC came out … And again, after a year of hearing this superintendent lecture parents and smugly say, “We’re just following the science,” he then when the CDC goes to three feet, which means he can bring kids back into the classroom and the capacity issue isn’t as big of a deal, he says, “No, no, no. We’re not going to follow CDC guidance. We’re going to follow my guidance.” I mean the steam coming out of parents’ ears. It’s so insulting. Again, it shows you that it was never about the science. It was never about the science. It was about keeping the allegiance to that idea, to closing schools, to keeping schools closed. It’s just amazing to me how dedicated they are to that goal.
Sue Zoldak:
At Do Better FCPS, we are dedicated to a lot of other topics beyond the COVID issue. What we have learned from looking at all these different topics is that these school board members and these superintendents and these administrators, they seem to have both a victimhood complex of, “Everyone’s out to get us. They don’t appreciate how much work we do.” So we always have to demonstrate how difficult their job is, to the extreme. But also, they seem to strive on claiming a situation where they can feel like they’ve come in and be the savior of your children.
We’re saving them from racial incidents. We’re saving them from horrible math or racist math. Or we’re saving them from X, Y, and Z. It’s just constant. Instead of focusing on how can education be better, it’s just focusing on how can we save them from some horrible, horrible thing that’s about to get your kids. If not for me, your child would be in these dire straits. Parents, I think, are starting to wake up and be like, “Hold on a second. But did you actually do the core job of educating my child to get them through the grade? Or are you just … You bought a solar panel?”
It’s becoming very clear that they’re in the job of patting themselves on the back as opposed to actually saying, “How do we make the most out of $3.2 billion so that everybody gets ahead. The rising tide raises all …” I mean they don’t think like that at all.
Julie Gunlock:
You are fighting for all children, not just your own. You are doing this. Again, I want to read you a little bit of a Twitter thread that Sue put up on March 27th, so essentially around the year anniversary of the schools closing and of her advocacy for all kids and for open schools and just better schools, better-run schools. She mentioned $3.2 billion school system. She wants that money to be spent on the kids and on educating these kids. So the organization she set up has been doing that.
It’s really interesting though, Sue, this Twitter thread. I want to ask you about it, but I want to read one part of it because you went on Fox News. Laura Ingraham had a great town hall talking about the closed school situation. It was really interesting. She had a medical panel on that. She had parents. You were there. You got some real blowback for going on her show. Again, everyone should follow Sue Zoldak, @SueZoldak. It’s Z-O-L-D-A-K, on Twitter. She has this as her pinned tweet, I think you do. You said, for going on that show and for what she’s done, because she’s asked a lot of questions of the public school. She’s shaken things up.
She’s made people mad with her questions. She says, from there, people have looked up her business, tried to see if she was a lobbyist. She says, “I’ve been accused of being a part of QAnon, being a racist, being a white supremacist.” This one is fun, “Hating teachers.” Sue says in this tweet, “I’m a former middle school teacher. I studied at the University of Michigan School of Education. I am a current adjunct professor. These accusations are nonstop. In fact, just yesterday, someone who tweeted anonymously posted about my connections to RightNOW Women’s PAC,” which is a very …
It’s hilarious because I think of that PAC as this nice organization that tries to encourage women to run for office. They posted it in this very conspiratorial way. It’s like literally saying you’re part of a church group or you’re part of the Junior League. This is not controversial. Anyway, Sue, tell me about some of that harassment that you’ve gotten, I assume not just from the officials at Fairfax schools, but also from other parents.
Sue Zoldak:
Absolutely. I mean it’s very unfortunate just what has happened in our communities I think nationwide. This is one of the things that I speak to a lot of parents about. Like you said, I was one of the first ones to start a group and a lot of parents reached out and said, “Wow, how did you do that? We want to model ourselves after you.” Even some of their groups named themselves with Do Better in their names kind of in honor of what we were doing, which we loved. But also, they took a look at our website and said, “How did you do this? We’d like to learn.”
But then, those questions then turn to, “What are you doing about the bullies? What are you doing? What are you doing about these people who are coming after you? Give us some advice because this is happening to us too.” So what you’ve pointed out is that they quickly pointed out that I am, in fact, a Republican. For some reason, that means by default that what I’m doing is sneaky, that I’m doing it for personal profit, that I’m-
Julie Gunlock:
That you’re a Trump supporter.
Sue Zoldak:
… trying to run a scam. Right. I mean they have literally accused me, which is very close to libel to say, “She’s done this as a racketeering organization to fill her own pocketbook.” I have a business reputation. So what I do in my real time, I run three businesses, all of which contain my name. I run The Zoldak Agency, which is a public affairs ad agency. I run a research firm called Zoldak Research, and I run a Republican digital agency called Zoldak Victory.
But they pick on that last one, which is actually the smallest of my three firms and the newest, as if to say, “Aha, of course. That means that she’s up to no good.” The logic is … I don’t even know if you want to call it logic. I mean using the word logic in this conversation is giving it too much credit. But I don’t know how that, A) makes any sense. I’m a legitimate Fairfax County resident. I’ve lived here since 2003. I’ve explained all this publicly. I’ve used my real name.
We use the Do Better FCPS website and Twitter handle because, actually, I don’t do this by myself. There’s a group of parents that we’ve been meeting for over a year twice a month, every two weeks. It’s a group of about 10 to 12 of us that people rotate in and out, depending on their real-life responsibilities. We went through a presidential election time during that year. Imagine living life in Washington, DC. Some people were busy during that time.
On both sides of the aisle, we have parents. I could not have built this website with a spending tracker, coded by myself. I’m not a coder. I try to explain to people. There’s actually a group of people, real parents that helps us, hundreds of parents, hundreds and hundreds of parents, teachers, students who have signed up, who have sent us tips through the website, who follow us on Twitter. Our Twitter account reaches upwards of 350,000 to 500,000 persons a month now.
People just want to say, “Well, she obviously is trying to make money from this.” I’m thinking, “What money am I …” First of all, anyone who does a grassroots parent organization knows you do not make money. Imagine trying to say, “I ran the middle school PTA and, boy, did I rake it in. Somehow I scammed those parents out of …” I can’t even imagine. So if that makes any sense whatsoever. I mean I guess this makes sense to them. But to go further and say because we advocated as a group against what they were doing to Thomas Jefferson High School and their admissions.
I’m an Asian American also. That bothered me not only personally but, as our group, we discussed and we were against that. So we always discussed these issues in our spaces as a group. They’re not just my personal pet peeves, let’s say.
Julie Gunlock:
I actually do-
Sue Zoldak:
It’s incredible.
Julie Gunlock:
I do want to talk about TJ. I want you to give the audience a quick elevator speech on what’s happening at TJ because I find that fascinating. That really connects to this push for anti-racist and CRT in our schools. But, before I do that, I just want to tell you, it’s interesting. In my city, we have an open schools group. One of our city school board members at one point on a recorded Zoom meeting said, actually said this. She was basically complaining about parents who wanted the schools open.
She was complaining about them. She said, “Look, parents just need to make a decision. Their children can be dead or they can be educated.” So, in effect saying that if you’re going to put your kids back in school, they’re going to catch COVID and they’re going to die. It was just such an insane thing that she said.
Sue Zoldak:
It’s very threatening.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. It was a terrible, terrible thing because it basically suggests that parents don’t care, they just want their kids out of the house, whatever. This went viral, of course, on Twitter. She gave this kind of mealy-mouthed apology. But Laura Ingraham, she did a monologue on it and showed the video. That’s part of the reason it went viral. Also, Daily Signal did a story on it. Twitchy tweeted about it. Some pretty high-level right-of-center accounts and media figures focused on this.
I thought that is great. That is great. It gives it some attention. My goodness, she didn’t say that again. Let’s just say that. I think it was really good that she got the pushback that she did. Well, my open schools group apologized, actually issued a statement apologizing for Laura … I have it screenshotted, but I don’t have the actual … I don’t have it in front of me. But essentially it was like, “We know a lot of you are upset that Laura Ingraham did a story on it.” To me, I was like, “Are you …”
Sue Zoldak:
It made it worse. I knew that was what you were going to say.
Julie Gunlock:
We should be grateful to Laura Ingraham for focusing on this-
Sue Zoldak:
Right, right. No, I agree.
Julie Gunlock:
… and giving it the media attention it deserves. If a school member has the audacity to talk to parents like that, you want that video to get out there and you want her to feel the heat. I think it’s great. I mean there wasn’t any canceling or anything like that. It was just this is an outrageous thing to say. But to have my open schools group apologize because it was icky, it was icky. It was on Fox News. I mean I live in a deeply, deeply liberal area.
Alexandria City, I think it’s the darkest blue you can get, so I get it. But to issue an apology, and I thought, “You know what? We should be grateful for this. We should be grateful for this exposure showing what parents in Alexandria City are dealing with, the nonsense that we deal with.” So I think that kind of harassment that you’ve gotten can go either where there’s … You can react in one way. You can just say, “Hey, I deny these things. I am not working for profit. I am not QAnon. I am not a racist.” But I think that kind of bullying is very intimidating to a lot of people who …
Heaven forbid if they find out one of the heads of the open group is Republican. Around here, that’s a real problem. That’s just very disappointing to me that-
Sue Zoldak:
I’m sorry.
Julie Gunlock:
Go ahead. No, no, no.
Sue Zoldak:
I spoke about that last night at the school board meeting I attended about that exact fact, that our school board, I said to them, “You have created a toxic environment in our schools where I now get calls from teachers who say, ‘I can’t even socialize or talk at my school about who I really am because the principal has allowed the political banter to go so far that I have to actually lie about who I voted for, pretend to be somebody I’m not because I’m afraid of the other teachers picking on me.'”
I mean that is harassment. That is a toxic workplace, and it comes from the top down. It comes from our school board members being all politically left on their social media and principals feeling like that’s the environment that we’re allowed to have. When they talk about diversity and inclusion and equality, they’re not taking into account that there are Republicans or conservatives or people who are of different religious backgrounds who actually are hiding who they are at work, at school, a student who may have supported Trump, whoever.
But again, it’s the point is it’s not for us to judge. A Fairfax County teacher should not be calling me and saying, “I’m scared to open my mouth at work and you’re the only person that I can talk to.”
Julie Gunlock:
Yes. The thing is is that that group, as a conservative, as a Republican in my community, to see that, to be part of this group that’s advocating for open schools and then to see them give this groveling apology for, “Ew, icky Fox News covered the issue,” I mean they’re desperate to get media attention. But then, apparently, they just find Fox News untoward. It just makes me so mad.
Sue Zoldak:
Right. It’s scary because-
Julie Gunlock:
In fact, what it says to a parent like me is I’m also icky, that they don’t want to associate with me. So there is a demographic of more conservative people in this city who they basically said, “You know what? We don’t need you in our group.” Again, I have sympathy for people like you who are running these groups, who get bullied and beat up, and people say libelous things about you. I have a lot of sympathy for that, but I don’t think the answer is to then be like, “You’re right. These people are bad. These reporters who just gave us national attention are bad.”
No, you say, “You know what, guys? We’re going to take any media attention we can get.” I don’t care if it’s a radio station in Nebraska. I’m going to be thrilled that someone is talking about the problems in Alexandria. So I really found that shortsighted.
Sue Zoldak:
It’s hypocrisy. It’s hypocrisy. I will tell you actually a lot of people don’t know how I ended up telling that story on Laura Ingraham. If you watch the show back or look at the photos, you’ll see that the chyron underneath our names does not fit at all what we are talking about. It actually talked about critical race theory. I was actually slated to talk about curriculum issues.
Laura Ingraham, their staff, their producers, they had called me about two, three hours before we were going to go live and said, “We looked through your tweets and we’re actually very concerned about you. We’re worried about these tweets of these people harassing you. We want to choose your entire segment to be about this. Laura wants to talk about this because she’s scared for you that these are so bad.” They didn’t even have time to change the onscreen graphics or anything.
Their producers, they pulled up these tweets. She’s like, “Tell us about this.” Of course, the people that we pulled up, they said, “We’re so happy. This is the best day of our lives. It’s our life goal to be featured as a villain on Laura Ingraham.” My response to them was, “You need to take this more seriously. Someone at National Fox News pulled your tweets out and actually feared for my safety because of what you were saying and thought that they’d better switch up my entire segment to talk about this, and you think it’s funny?”
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. I mean these are-
Sue Zoldak:
One of these people is a teacher. One of the people is a teacher at Fairfax County. He thinks it’s hilarious.
Julie Gunlock:
I think I know which teacher. I’ve seen this guy tweeting. He tweeted to Asra Nomani who’s been fighting this and to a Black father who’s also been fighting some of the critical race theory. He’s been tweeting it. I think I know exactly who you’re talking about. This guy should have no place near children because he is-
Sue Zoldak:
No place.
Julie Gunlock:
No place near children.
Sue Zoldak:
No place.
Julie Gunlock:
It is sickening.
Sue Zoldak:
He harasses parents all the time online. He told one mother who was tweeting about her problems with her child [inaudible 00:38:01]. He told her, “[inaudible 00:38:03] is not a weight loss clinic, woman.”
Julie Gunlock:
Oh no.
Sue Zoldak:
When another woman was talking about mental health, he tweeted at her, “It seems like we must be in a pandemic, huh?” All this sarcasm, all this … And then worse yet is that last month he tweeted, “If it were up to me, I’d burn Thomas Jefferson to the ground.”
Julie Gunlock:
Unbelievable. Okay. This is a good-
Sue Zoldak:
It’s unbelievable.
Julie Gunlock:
You’re very good at this, because that’s a perfect segue. I know we’ve gone over our time, but I really do want you to give a quick explanation. Give our readers. Honestly, you should come back on and we should talk just about TJ, what’s happening.
Sue Zoldak:
Just about-
Julie Gunlock:
Let me give the listeners just a quick … TJ stands for Thomas Jefferson High School. I mean this is no joke. It is the best high school in the United States. It is number one high school. It is incredibly respected. It’s a science and mathematical high school, very heavily focused on math and science. You actually have to take a test to get into this school. Needless to say, I would never pass that test to get into that. When I was a 14-year-old kid, I would never. These are really, really bright kids that get into TJ.
Sue, this is all part of … We’re kind of shifting gears here away from opening school subject to more of the critical race theory. Tell me what’s going on there and how this fight for equity and I’ve explained on the show before, equity is not the same as equality. But this fight for so-called equity is really going to destroy TJ. Tell the listeners a little bit about that.
Sue Zoldak:
There is this constant need in Fairfax County, for some reason, to count how many people are in each race. So we first have to start there. I mean there’s very few board meetings where somebody says, “Well, in Fairfax County, there are 20% Asian.” They even for their resolution to celebrate Asian American Heritage Month, the first sentence was, “Whereas there are 20% Asians in Fairfax County.” I kid you not.
Julie Gunlock:
Good God.
Sue Zoldak:
So this statistic is very important to them. Let’s just lay the background. So Thomas Jefferson happens to be 70% Asian. Well, apparently, according to them, that is a fact to be ashamed of and, instead of being proud that TJ is, as you mentioned, the number one high school in the United States by US News & World Report based on how many people attend college, 100%, by the way, how many people attend an Ivy League College, what the average SAT score is, how many people there go on to successful careers, any statistic that you want to use, how many people win national scholarship awards, et cetera.
It’s ranked the number one school. But, for Fairfax County, that’s nothing to be happy about because the one thing that is a glaring, horrible … We should be thoroughly embarrassed is that there’s 70% Asians there. So they feel like the reason for that is that Asians study too hard for the entrance test. They have extra tutoring. There is, in fact, in Fairfax County, a few tutoring academies that are taught in Asian languages. There’s a Korean language tutoring academy. Let’s just say that, for some people, this is very bothersome.
They want to connect that with something untoward, something unfair. Again, I’m an Asian American. I actually was not born in this country. I was born in Taiwan. To say that there’s a cultural difference between Asian families and families of other cultures is not an excuse. There is, in fact, a cultural difference in how education and especially math and sciences are viewed by Asian cultures because there’s a right and a wrong answer in math. I know this is very hard for people to understand. We tend to like those academics because they’re concrete, and we’re concrete people.
We don’t have a ton of poet laureates. We have a lot of math … I’m sorry to say I’m going to stereotype. It’s a little bit cultural. But not only that, and I spoke about this other very important fact that the school board doesn’t like to address at a couple school board meetings ago. There’s also something called the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act which required all the immigrants from Asia to be in a STEM field.
Julie Gunlock:
Are you serious?
Sue Zoldak:
I am, in fact, serious because my father was only allowed in this country because he was going to get a PhD in quantum physics.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh my gosh.
Sue Zoldak:
The fact is we had to, Asian immigrants, in order to get a visa, you have to commit to-
Julie Gunlock:
Fascinating.
Sue Zoldak:
… or prove proficiency in a, guess what? A STEM field. So you can’t come in here if you want to be a poet laureate or an English major. They would deny you the visa. So not only is it a cultural interest, we literally … If I could just imagine an analogy, let’s say there was a wall. In order to get through that wall, you had to only be competent in certain fields. This is not by our choice. This is the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.
Julie Gunlock:
Fascinating.
Sue Zoldak:
So then, you factor that into the fact that Fairfax County is a tech, cyber, DoD corridor. It’s a tech corridor, AOL. So there are actually, proportionately more tech, STEM, science jobs in Fairfax County, especially in areas like Tysons, Dulles, than in other parts of the country, let’s say, in Columbus, Ohio. So now you compound those statistics and I ask you whether or not having 20% Asians at a STEM school, these are descendants, either first or second generation descendants of people who crossed this wall, the 1965 Immigration Act, whether it makes sense for you to ask for a one-to-one parity, a 20% to 20%. Mathematically and historically, that doesn’t even make say sense.
Julie Gunlock:
No, it doesn’t.
Sue Zoldak:
I’m sorry that history lesson dragged on a little long, but-
Julie Gunlock:
No, that is fascinating.
Sue Zoldak:
… this is my personal history.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes, yes.
Sue Zoldak:
Would I be in this country if my dad wasn’t a quantum physicist? No.
Julie Gunlock:
So obviously, never invite me over. I’ll be the dumbest person in the room with your family there.
Sue Zoldak:
But what I’m trying to say is it’s not my fault. I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t even know me if it was any another way.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, this is the thing.
Sue Zoldak:
My family would have been denied entry.
Julie Gunlock:
So you’ve got a situation here where, culturally, math, science and, again, historically that’s who came into the country. And yet, Fairfax officials who don’t bother to do any of this or don’t care-
Sue Zoldak:
No, don’t care.
Julie Gunlock:
Like you said, they are really obsessed with counting, and not in a good way. They’re counting. So they want absolute, the proportion of Black people in Fairfax County should be the proportion of TJ. So instead of you said it’s 70% Asian, it should be 20% and whatever the proportion of Black … So the point is that that is now their goal. What are they doing to make this happen? They are taking away the test. Is this correct?
Sue Zoldak:
They took away the test and replaced it with a portrait of the learner essay and what they want to call a merit lottery, but it’s really a lottery. I mean I don’t know if the word merit lottery makes sense in anywhere else other than Fairfax County. But anyone above a certain GPA, they’d put your names in a hat and draw and they consider that fair. I want to stop and say, obviously, as a teacher and as a math person, I want everyone to have an opportunity at a governor’s academy like TJ. But the answer would have been to create more TJs, to create more pathways to it.
Julie Gunlock:
Right, right. The other answer is, I don’t know, it’s so much bigger than just looking at the school itself. I mean what is going on at home that these kids are not doing well in school? Or what is going on in the school that they’re at, that math instruction? I will tell you right now, my son at George Mason Elementary where my son goes to school, the math instruction is so bad. The funniest part was we have a tutor now for him and our tutor looked over the homework sheet, which I had to beg for.
I was like, “I want you to send me homework sheets that correspond to what you’re learning so I can print them off for my son.” They were wrong. He gave an answer key with it, and the answer key was wrong.
Sue Zoldak:
It doesn’t make sense.
Julie Gunlock:
The math instruction is so bad. So maybe we need to look at schools where they have a high percentage of Black students and look at what is the problem there. Maybe we need to consider-
Sue Zoldak:
They have to look at the bigger problem, exactly.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah.
Sue Zoldak:
This isn’t the fault of our hardworking teachers. I love our hardworking teachers. But the way our educational training system works in the United States is that teachers who are certified for up to sixth grade, so what we call primary school, do not have to take higher-level math. Only people who are certified to teach seven and up have to take advanced math. So one of the things that we could help prepare more children for a STEM academy, like TJ, is to just change the math requirement of elementary school teachers.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, you know out of another thing out of equity, they’ve gotten rid of advanced math now. Now Virginia won’t be even offering the honors math or advanced tracking for math. So they’re actually going to make the worse problem.
Sue Zoldak:
That’s the wrong direction.
Julie Gunlock:
I would just say one thing. Look, Sue, I can’t imagine ever disagreeing with you, but I will say one thing. I am tired of feeling like I always have to give teachers a pass. I am real, real tired of it now. It has been a year, and I’ve seen very little advocacy on the part of teachers themselves. Frankly, I think the teachers unions are really the force behind closed schools and I’m really disappointed. Frankly, I have given so much grace and I’ve been so patient for over a year and a half.
I still have one in the public school system. We’re pulling him out next year. But the point is is that we have a terrible … My son has a math teacher. The fear of ever being critical of a teacher because there’s this pathology out there now, you’re not allowed to ever criticize a teacher. I’m a little tired of that. I think parents should say, “Look, this is not great math instruction.” I can afford to get my son a tutor who does intense tutoring with him. She has done more with Will. My son is doing really well, really great.
We actually have a separate textbook for him. He’s doing parallel work. But I can afford that. Okay. But this teacher is teaching kids who are English learning language, have special needs problems, and he’s does a terrible job. Everyone just kind of looks the other way. I mean I have been on group Zoom calls about this teacher with other parents and no one … I say something because I’m this loud fishwife who’s always screaming about things. But no one else would say anything. I’m not kidding you. Some of the parents actually said to me, “I can’t say anything because I need that teacher to give my child a recommendation letter for a private school.”
I mean talk about privileged. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to risk it. I’m just going to risk it.” Believe me, this guy doesn’t like me. You know what? I asked a different teacher for a recommendation, so I found a way around it. But it is amazing the silence of the privileged people because they don’t want to speak up. Again, I think in this COVID time, there was a short time where you could never criticize a restaurant if you got a bad meal, because of COVID. That’s dangerous. You should be able to criticize teachers and talk about, look, teachers should be doing a better job.
Frankly, I’m pretty PO-ed that teachers are staying at home after getting a vaccine. There’s a lot of kids that go to school, that their schools have opened and they’re sitting in a classroom with a computer Zooming with their teacher who’s at home. I get it. You’re nice. I don’t want to slam teachers either, but I’ve gotten over this tiptoeing around the teacher issue now because I think they’re accountable.
Sue Zoldak:
Yeah, no. I completely understand that. No. We agree with that stance at Do Better. I myself have been really explaining what is going to be the impact of collective bargaining on the situation, which that’s a new development in the state of Virginia. Also, we have been advocating, and this may seem like a small thing, but for parents to not support their PTA and because the PTA is just a wholesale-
Julie Gunlock:
Adjunct.
Sue Zoldak:
… a lumping of all the teachers together as opposed to individually recognizing the teachers who deserve recognizing one at a time. Why should I give $100 into a group fund where I would rather just thank the individual teachers who I felt helped my child or someone in the front office or whomever who went out of their way for somebody, either my child or somebody else, and reward them as I see fit as opposed to constantly being asked to give into this pool where it just goes to everybody.
Julie Gunlock:
Sue, I just did an episode on the PTA and how the PTAs have become … They’re activists. The National PTA, I mean the shocking things that they promote and want PTAs to get behind. Frankly, the PTAs have been utterly silent during this. They had their national convention and do you know opening schools wasn’t on the agenda. They never talked about it, but they did talk about climate change. They talked about banning guns, and they talked about a whole bunch of other issues that …
I mean I have this parenting podcast. Almost every single episode has been about the open school issues because that’s what parents are talking about.
Sue Zoldak:
That’s what parents are talking about.
Julie Gunlock:
The PTA, that is why groups like you are-
Sue Zoldak:
I don’t know what they’re doing. Right, right.
Julie Gunlock:
I don’t know either. Do you know what they’re doing? You know what they’re doing? They’re telling women-
Sue Zoldak:
I don’t know what they’re doing.
Julie Gunlock:
You know what they’re doing? They’re telling women to get in the kitchen and make cookies. I swear that’s the only thing I ever do for PTA is make cookies.
Sue Zoldak:
Right. They’re like, “Can you bring us a pie?” I’m like, “I’m not going to bring you a pie. I’m not.”
Julie Gunlock:
No. I know.
Sue Zoldak:
The thing is, I will tell you right now, I have sent my daughter’s teachers cookies, cupcakes, thank you notes. I have done that for individual teachers who I felt like have been supportive of the difficult year that children have had, and I have done that individually. If I feel like a principal has done something, I have absolutely recognized them. But I don’t need the PTA to be the intermediary where I give them a pie, so they give someone else a pie. You know what I mean?
Julie Gunlock:
Yes, yes, yes.
Sue Zoldak:
I’m an adult. I’m going to decide who gets the pie. Thank you very much.
Julie Gunlock:
That is why we have needed groups like yours and the other open schools groups, whether it’s Open Arlington, whether it’s Open Loudoun County and Open New York City, Open Chicago. There are all these groups. These little groups are a powerful force that have replaced the PTA. The PTA is really losing money. People are not joining the PTA and they shouldn’t. All you have to do is look.
Sue Zoldak:
They shouldn’t.
Julie Gunlock:
Go look at the PTA and see the issues that they are pushing and their absolute absence during the biggest upheaval in education in the United States and they did not have a seat at the table. I am so angry at the PTA, but I am so pleased that groups like yours have come basically to the rescue, are the only organized voices out there that are speaking for parents. Sue, I can’t thank you enough. I think you are so brave. You are so plucky and funny on Twitter. I know you have other people that help you with Do Better FCPS. So thank you so much.
Listen, I want you to tell our audience where can they find you. I apologize. My husband’s phone is ringing in the background. That’ll make a nice addition to this podcast. But tell us where we can find you.
Sue Zoldak:
Our group is called Do Better FCPS for Do Better Fairfax County Public Schools. It’s on the web at www.dobetterfcps.com. We are most active on Twitter, which is @DoBetterFCPS. We also have recently started a PAC which we will … Because our elections are in 2023 for school board and local delegates and that is dobetteraction.org where we’ll be soon accepting basically PAC donations to help influence the upcoming elections.
Julie Gunlock:
That’s great, great news. I’m so thrilled. I’m really glad that you’ve shifted it into something more permanent, permanent advocacy for parents. So you make me want to move to Fairfax County.
Sue Zoldak:
Well, we’re hoping everyone, every county, every parent become, and we are seeing this, as you’ve said, become motivated to have representation and a diverse voice on the school board or on the board of supervisors, anywhere where in the local arena where people now realize it does matter to have diversity. It does matter to vote. That’s what I would love to end this on is just a lot of people do say, “Sue, thank you for what you’re doing.” I want to say you don’t have to thank me.
I’m just thrilled when people say, “I’m involved now. I’m going to stay tuned to this.” We’re grateful. I’m going to keep taking on the rough comments. I just want people to feel like they can go out there and be protected and make a difference and know that they’re not alone.
Julie Gunlock:
Sue, what a great way to end this. I really appreciate you coming on. I hope your message gets out there more and more and you keep being active in keeping these school officials accountable for what they’re doing. So thanks again for coming on to Bespoke Parenting Hour.
Sue Zoldak:
Julie, thank you so much.
Julie Gunlock:
Thanks, everyone, for being here for another episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. If you enjoyed this episode or like the podcast in general, please leave a rating or review on iTunes. This helps ensure that the podcast reaches as many listeners as possible. If you haven’t subscribed to the Bespoke Parenting Hour on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, please do so, so you won’t miss an episode.
Don’t forget to share this episode and let your friends know that they can get Bespoke episodes on their favorite podcast app. From all of us here at the Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.